What I Read in 2021

Here is a list of the books I read in 2021. This is more for my records, but I would recommend most, but not all, of them.

1. 109 East Palace by Jennet Conant
2. 1356 by Bernard Cornwell
3. A Sense of Honor by James Webb
4. A Time for Mercy by John Grisham
5. After the Prophet: The Epic Story of the Shia-Sunni Split in Islam by Lesley Hazleton
6. American Street by Ibi Zoboi
7. Black Buck: A Novel by Mateo Askaripour
8. Black Klansman by Ron Stallworth
9. Blue Like Jazz by Donald Miller
10. Book of Ages: The Life and Opinions of Jane Franklin by Jill Lepore
11. Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood by Trevor Noah
12. Bound for Gold by William Martin
13. Brave New Home: Our Future in Smarter, Simpler, Happier Housing by Diana Lind
14. Caste: The Origin of Our Discontent by Isabel Wilkerson
15. Celebration of Discipline by Richard Foster
16. Cloak of Deception by James Luceno
17. Dare to Dream: Creating a God-Sized Mission Statement for Your Life by Mike Slaughter
18. Dear Ijeawele, or a Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
19. Do Not Live Afraid: Faith in a Fearful World by John Indermark
20. Early Morning Riser by Katherine Heiny
21. Eaters of the Dead by Michael Crichton
22. Eight Life-Enriching Practices of United Methodists by Hal Knight
23. Escalante's Dream: On the Trail of the Spanish Discovery of the Southwest by David Roberts
24. Exploring the Seven Elements of the Lord's Prayer: A Thought-Provoking Journey Into the Practical and Biblical Principles of the Prayer Given to Us by Christ Jesus by Erik Douglas Randolph
25. Frontier Grit: The Unlikely True Stories of Daring Pioneer Women by Marianne Monson
26. Futureproof: 9 Rules for Humans in the Age of Automation by Kevin Roose
27. God the What? What Our Metaphors for God Reveal about Our Beliefs in God by Carolyn Jane Bohler
28. Great Circle by Maggie Shipstead
29. Hail Mary by Andy Weir
30. Heretic by Bernard Cornwell
31. Hidden Valley Road: Inside the Mind of an American Family by Robert Kolker
32. Hiroshima by John Hersey
33. His Truth is Marching On: John Lewis and the Power of Hope by Jon Meachem
34. I Alone Can Fix It: Donald Trump's Catastrophic Final Year by Carole Leonnig and Phillip Rucker
35. In the Hurricane's Eye: The Genius of George Washington and the Victory at Yorktown by Nathaniel Philbrick
36. Indians on Vacation by Thomas King
37. Insignificant Events in the Life of a Cactus by Dusti Bowling
38. Interior Chinatown by Charles Yu
39. Lies We Believe About God by Wm. Paul Young
40. Life in a Medieval Castle by Brenda Ralph Lewis
41. Life in a Medieval Village by Frances and Joseph Gies
42. Living a Life that Matters by Harold S. Kushner
43. Living the Lord's Prayer by Rowan Williams and Wendy Beckett
44. Lord, Teach Us: The Lord's Prayer and the Christian Life by William Willimon and Stanley Hauerwas
45. Lords of the North by Bernard Cornwell
46. Lupe Wong Won't Dance by Donna Barba Higuera
47. Maniac: The Bath School Disaster and the Birth of the Modern Mass Killer by Harold Schechter
48. Mary Magdalene: A Biography by Bruce Chilton
49. Matrix by Lauren Groll
50. Me and White Supremacy: Combat Racism, Change the World, and Become a Good Ancestor by Layla F. Saad
51. Mingling with the Enemy: A Social Survival Guide for Our Divided Era by Jeanne Martinet
52. Minimalism for Families by Zoe Kim
53. Momentous Events in the Life of a Cactus by Dusti Bowling
54. Mornings on Horseback: The Story of an Extraordinary Family, a Vanished Way of Life, and the Unique Child Who Became Theodore Roosevelt by David McCullough
55. Move: What 1,000 Churches Reveal about Spiritual Growth by Greg L. Hawkins
56. Notes on Grief by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
57. Of Logs and Stone: The Buildings of the Los Alamos Ranch School and Bathtub Row by Craig Martin
58. Olympic Pride, American Prejudice: The Untold Story of 18 African Americans Who Defied Jim Crow and Adolf Hitler to Compete in the 1936 Berlin Olympics by Deborah Riley Draper, Blair Underwood and Travis Thrasher
59. On Juneteenth by Annette Gordon-Reed
60. On Pandemics: Deadly Diseases from Bubonic Plague to Coronavirus by David Waltner-Toews
61. Outlawed by Anna North
62. Overcoming Bias: Building Authentic Relationships Across Differences by Tiffany Jana and Matthew Freeman
63. Pegasus Bridge: June 6, 1944 by Stephen E. Ambrose
64. Peter, Paul and Mary Magdalene: The Followes of Jesus in Legend and History by Bart Ehrman
65. Practicing Resurrection: The Gospel of Mark and Radical Discipleship by Janet Wolf
66. Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir
67. Questions God Asks Us by Trevor Hudson
68. Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari
69. Searching for Sunday: Leaving, Loving and Finding the Church by Rachel Held-Evans
70. Shadows of the Empire by Steve Perry
71. She Came to Slay: The Life and Times of Harriet Tubman by Erica Armstrong Dunbar
72. Shutter Island by Dennis Lehane
73. Simple Governance: Liberating Your Church for Mission by Stephan Ross
74. Something Must Be Done About Prince Edward County: A Family, a Virginia Town, a Civil Rights Battle by Kristen Green
75. Sooley by John Grisham
76. Soul Feast: An Invitation to the Christian Spiritual Life by Marjorie J. Thompson
77. Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You by Jason Reynolds and Ibram X. Kendi
78. Stride: Creating a Discipleship Pathway for Your Church by Mike Schreiner and Ken Willard
79. Strong Towns: A Bottom-Up Revolution to Rebuild American Prosperity by Charles L. Marohn Jr.
80. Subliminal: How Your Unconscious Mind Rules Your Behavior by Leonard Mlodinow
81. T. Rex and the Crater of Doom by Walter Alvarez
82. Talking to Strangers by Malcolm Gladwell
83. That Left Turn at Albuquerque by Scott Phillips
84. The Amazon Way: 14 Leadership Principles Behind the World's Most Disruptive Company by John Rossman
85. The American Spirit: Who We Are and What We Stand For by David McCullough
86. The Archer's Tale by Bernard Cornwel
87. The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes by Suzanne Collins
88. The Battle for Civil Rights, Or, How Los Alamos Became a County by Marjorie Bell Chambers
89. The Bomber Mafia by Macolm Gladwell
90. The Burning Blue: The Untold Story of Christa McAuliffe and NASA's Challenger Disaster by Kevin Cook
91. The Death and Life of Great American Cities by Jane Jacobs
92. The Eagles of Heart Mountain: The True Story of Football, Incarceration and Resistence in World War II America by Bradford Pearson
93. The End of Youth Ministry?: Why Parents Don't Really Care about Youth Groups and What Youth Workers Should Do about It by Andrew Root
94. The Endurance: Shackleton's Legendary Antarctic Expedition by Caroline Alexander
95. The Five Dysfunctions of a Team by Patrick Lencioni
96. The Greatest Prayer by John Dominic Crossan
97. The Idolatry of God: Breaking Our Addiction to Certainty and Satisfaction by Peter Rollins
98. The Immoral Majority: Why Evangelicals Chose Political Power Over Christian Values by Ben Howe
99. The Jewish Background to the Lord's Prayer by Brad Young
100. The Kindness Challenge: Thirty Days to Improve Any Relationship by Shaunti Feldhahn
101. The Last Kingdom by Bernard Cornwell
102. The Little Book of Hygge: The Danish Way to Live Well by Meik Wiking
103. The Lord and His Prayer by NT Wright
104. The Lord's Prayer by C. Clifton Black
105. The Lord's Prayer by Mary Lou Redding
106. The Lord's Prayer: Jesus Teaches Us How to Pray by Mary Lou Redding
107. The Man from the Train: The Solving of a Century-Old Serial Killer Mystery by Bill James and Rachel McCarthy James
108. The Morning and the Evening by Ken Follett
109. The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander
110. The Night Lake: A Young Priest Maps the Topography of Grief by Liz Tichenor
111. The Pale Horseman by Bernard Cornwell
112. The Passion Paradox: A Guide to Going All In, Finding Success, and Discovering the Benefits of an Unbalanced Life by Brad Stulberg and Steve Magness
113. The Physics of Star Wars by Patrick Johnson
114. The Pioneers: The Heroic Story of the Settlers Who Brought the American Ideal West by David McCullough
115. The Prayer That Turns the World Upside Down: The Lord's Prayer as a Manifesto for Revolution by R. Albert Mohler Jr.
116. The Return of Marco Polo's World: War, Strategy, and American Interests in the Twenty-first Century by Robert D. Kaplan
117. The Second: Race and Guns in a Fatally Unequal America by Carol Anderson
118. The Sinking of the Bismark by William L. Shirer
119. The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History by Elizabeth Kolbert
120. The Templars: The Rise and Spectacular Fall of God's Holy Warriors by Dan Jones
121. The Truth about Lies: The Illusion of Honesty and the Evolution of Deceit by Aja Raden
122. The Upswing: How America Came Together a Century Ago and How We Can Do It Again by Robert D. Putnam
123. Thrawn Ascendency: Greater Good by Timothy Zahn
124. Traitor: A History of American Betrayal from Benedict Arnold to Donald Trump by David Rothkopf
125. Transcendent Kingdom by Yaa Gyasi
126. Triumph: The Untold Story of Jesse Owens and Hitler's Olympics by Jeremy Schaap
127. Vagabond by Bernard Cornwell
128. Valley of the Guns: The Pleasant Valley War and the Trauma of Violence by Eduardo Obreg Pagan
129. We are Not Like Them by Christine Pride and Jo Piazza
130. What Do We Do with the Bible by Richard Rohr
131. What Would You Do If You Weren't Afraid?: Discover a Life Filled with Purpose and Joy Through the Secrets of Jewish Wisdom by Michal Oshman
132. White Evangelical Racism by Anthea Butler
133. Working Class Rage by Tex Sample
134. Year Book by Seth Rogen
135. You Are Not American: Citizenship Stripping from Dred Scott to the Dreamers by Amanda Frost
136. You'll Never Believe What Happened to Lacy: Crazy Stories About Racism by Amber Ruffin and Lacey Lamar

Temple Tossed

Here is my message from Sunday. The text was Luke 2:41-52:

I remember one Christmas morning when I was young, although I don’t remember how old I was. We had just finished unwrapping our presents, but were still sitting at the base of our Christmas tree surrounded by the gifts and detritus that Christmas morning usually brings for small children, I turned to my mother and asked when Easter was.  My mother is here today and she can verify this.  The reason this question was important was because I knew the best part of Christmas was over. Having turkey was never my idea of a good time, and the next time when we would receive presents and candy was at Easter, and so I wanted to know how long I was going to have to wait.  Today’s scripture reading seems to be moving in that same direction that I was all those many years ago.  Today many people will take down their Christmas trees, guests will begin to go home, and Christmas music can no longer be heard on the radio. For many Christmas is still in the air and I’m sure that many of us will be going home for more Christmas leftovers.  After all, it was yesterday, and technically it’s only the second day of Christmas, but yet here we find ourselves reading and talking about a story not of Jesus as an infant, but instead as a young boy of 12.  Kids sure do grow up fast these days.

Now this might seem like a strange passage to read on the first Sunday after Christmas, and it is, although it is the assigned reading for today, but it’s also just a strange passage in general especially for Luke. That’s true first because this story makes no sense in relation to Luke’s birth narrative which precedes it.  After all, it is in Luke’s narrative that Mary is visited by an angel and told that the child she will carry is special, and Mary responds by giving us the magnificat, her beautiful poetic response.  It is in Luke’s gospel that John the Baptist, who has his own miraculous conception story, is a cousin of Jesus who leaps in his mother’s womb when his mother Elizabeth and Mary meet.  It is in Luke’s narrative that the shepherds are sent to Bethlehem by an angel and come to pay homage to the child in a manger, and we are told “Mary treasured all these things in her heart.”  And it is in Luke’s narrative that when Joseph and Mary present Jesus at the Temple shortly after his birth and make an offering for their first born son that Anna and Simeon both make claims about who Jesus is and what he means to Israel.  And yet if we just read today’s passage none of this seems to have taken place, or if it did then Mary and Joseph have totally forgotten about them after only twelve years, which seems very unlikely.  Mary even refers to Joseph as Jesus’ father. This story just simply doesn’t match up with what has come before it. 

Abiding in the Fields

Here is my message for Christmas Eve. The scripture was Luke 2:1-20: 

They say that familiarity breed contempt. But what familiarity also breeds is comfortableness, as people are attracted to things that are familiar, and when things are familiar to us, and comfortable for us, we also tend to think we know them really well, so much so that we might stop paying attention to the details in the story. I think the same is true for the Christmas story. Most of us have probably heard that passage from Luke about the birth of Jesus for what seems like hundreds of times. I mean even if we only heard it every year in the Charlie Brown Christmas Special, as it’s what Linus quotes from when he wants everyone to know the meaning of Christmas, we could have heard it at least 56 times since it’s debut in 1965. And when we stop paying attention because we know it, we can overlook things or even add things to it because it just has to be there, because we know it’s there. So, for example, we talk about Mary riding into Bethlehem on a donkey, but there are no donkey’s in the story, and definitely not Dominic the donkey. We have other barnyard animals in our nativity set. No mention of them in the story. We have three wise men arriving, and some of you may remember their names as Melchior, Gaspar and Balthazar, but not only are they not named, but we don’t even know how many there were. We say three because there were three gifts, but let’s be honest that men are not always the best at getting social etiquette correct, and so it’s entirely possible that some of them went in together on gifts, or maybe even had the temerity to show up without a gift at all. And then there are the parts of the story we just want to skip over all together.

Blue Christmas: Joy Comes in the Morning

Here is my sermon for our Blue Christmas service. The text was Isaiah 40:1-11 and Luke 1:67-79:

This is a picture of a painting that hangs in my office and I really like it. It was painted by Irma Fath, who was a member of the last church I served, and she was largely self-taught. We have two other of her paintings of New Mexico landscapes that hang in our dining room. But when Irma was 94, I believe, she was diagnosed with cancer, and she decided she had had a good life and didn’t seek any treatment. In a memorial service here earlier this fall I talked about that there used to be a Christian concept called the art of dying. It encouraged people to think about their mortality, not as an act of morbidity, but to think about it as an act of faithful living, to plan how they wanted to die in order to be an example of the Christian faith and the promise of eternal life. It’s not really practiced or talked about today because as a culture we want to ignore the whole idea of death and grief and push them to the side. But as deaths go, Irma had a good death’s journey and a good death. And in one of the last times I saw her she said she wanted me to pick out one painting that I liked and take it, and this is the one I chose.

And what I really like about this painting, first is that it looks cold, and I love cold weather, but it’s also because of the question this painting poses to me. I don’t know if it’s already winter and this woman is stopping to pause and look at these beautiful flowers outside of this shop, sort of being reminded of the beauty of the flowers and the promise they remind her of a spring to come. Or is it already spring, and thus appropriate to have flowers sitting out, and she is out in one of those cold snaps we always get that reminds us that winter is not done with us yet. And so there is this tension of the cold and dark of winter and the life and beauty and warmth of spring all sort of tied up together here in this moment. It’s that tension that’s tied up in this night.

Fear For

Here is my message from yesterday. The text was Matthew 2:13-18:

So far we have heard several angelic pronouncements about the coming birth of Jesus, or of John who will prepare the way. We had the announcement to Zechariah, and we were told he was terrified. We heard the announcement to the shepherds as we set the nativity today, and we are told they are terrified. And the angel’s response to them? Do not be afraid. We also have the announcement to Mary in Luke, and to her betrothed Joseph in Matthew, and although we are not told that they are afraid, which I think is significant, they too are told not to be afraid. But there is one another person who plays a crucial role that we are told is frightened when he hears word of Jesus’ birth, and that is Herod, whose official title is King of the Jews, although his announcement is not from an angelic messenger,. And so I have been using a quote from Max Lucado who says that “fear, at its center, is about a perceived loss of control.” And so, if that is true that it would make perfect sense that Herod is frightened because what the wise men do when they arrive, and please note that it doesn’t actually say how many there are there, is that they ask is where they can find the child who is born king of the Jews? And so that begins the trouble.

Herod sends the wise men on their way and tells them to come back and tell him where the child is so he can go and pay homage, which we can guess is probably not true, and as it turns out we know is not what he wants. But the wise men are warned not to go back to Herod and so go a different way, and Joseph too is warned to flee Egypt. And so Joseph takes Jesus and Mary and they flee during the night making their way to Egypt in order to protect themselves from Herod. And because he appears to be thwarted by the wise men, we are told that Herod is furious or extremely angry. And out of his anger he strikes out at Bethlehem. Fear and anger, although different emotions, are not unrelated to each other.

Fearless Living

Here is my message from Sunday. The text was Luke 1:26-33, 46-55

When it comes to fear, Halloween is sort of an amazing holiday when we look at it from a 30,000 foot level, because what we do is to turn on lights and invite all the gremlins and goblins to come into the light and then rather than shrieking in fear, we instead ooh and awe over their costumes and tell them how great they look, maybe even how scary they look, and then give them candy and send them off to be bathed in someone else’s light. How great is that? What if the world acted like that all the time? Because normally we shrink in fear, we turn off our lights and lock the door to the gremlins of the world, or those who are different, those who don’t meet the standards we want them to have. We keep them at arms distance and away from us and we fear them. But a holiday that is in some ways to celebrate the fear in actuality works to overcome it, which was part of the purpose. And Christmas is working to try and do the same as well, because the refrain we continually hear from the angels in their proclamation about the coming of Jesus the messiah is do not be afraid, and so that is our theme for this Advent season of learning how not to be afraid.

And so last week we heard the story of the announcement to Zechariah that his wife would become pregnant in her old age and give birth to a son who would become John the Baptist. And even though he has been praying for this to happen, it doesn’t seem he actually believed it would happen because he questions Gabriel about the reality of it. And because of that questioning he is struck silent, unable to speak for the nine month pregnancy of his wife Elizabeth. But the other piece of his story is that we are told that when he sees the angel Gabriel as Zechariah is serving in the Temple that he is terrified. And Gabriel’s response? “Do not be afraid.” And so then let’s compare that against today’s passages.

Fearing God

Here is my sermon from Sunday. The text was Luke 1:5-20:

After I had moved to New Mexico, I went back to visit my parents and Phoenix and went to the local Christian bookstore that I used to frequent, and in their best seller section was a book entitled The Joy of Fearing God. An interesting title. And so when I got back to Santa Fe, I went to a Christian bookstore there, and not only was it not in their bestseller section, they didn’t even have it in stock, which confirmed for me that Santa Fe was a little more enlightened than Phoenix. But they did order it for me. Now in the book of proverbs, which is part of the wisdom literature and we will be looking at that after the new year, in the 9th chapter we hear a famous phrase that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. That was the passage that the author was basing his book on and using our understanding of fear as being afraid that “someone or something is dangerous, likely to cause pain, or a threat.” But is that the understanding of God that we are to have, or the way that we are to approach a relationship with God thinking that God is dangerous, a threat or likely to hurt us? There is certainly some scriptural witness to that, at least on the part of humanity.

In Genesis, after Adam and Eve eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, although they don’t eat an apple nor are they tempted by the devil, they hide. After God finds them and asks them what they are doing, which is actually the first real interchange we have between God and humanity, we also get the introduction of the idea of fear because Adam tells God that he heard God walking in the garden and he was afraid. And why? Because he was afraid of being punished for doing what he was told not to do. That matches that definition of fear, and what also comes out of this interchange in the idea of blame and scapegoating. But that becomes the way that some people begin to view God, that is through a sense of fear of punishment or danger. And yet we also continue to see God try and counteract that.

Extravagant Joy

Here is my message from Sunday. The text was Matthew 6:25-33 and 2 Corinthians 8:1-12:

When I was serving churches in New England, I was attending a clergy meeting, although I don’t remember the purpose, but one of the other clergy there was serving a church that had a sizeable homeless population in their neighborhood that they served. And so he was talking about that, and said that during a worship service he saw one of the homeless men put a couple of dollars into the offering plate, and he went out and stopped the plate, took the money out and handed it back to the man and told him he didn’t need to make an offering. My response to that was “who do you think you are that you would stop him from giving.” Now I understand all the other arguments that could be made about someone who is homeless needing the money more than the church. Or perhaps he felt like he had to make an offering. That he would stand out if he didn’t put anything into the plates. But the flip side of all of those is our need or desire to give. That even though the man did not have a lot of money, and perhaps even what he put in was all he had, but that he was going to give because of his blessings. He was going to give out of his abundance, as Jesus says of the widow in the Temple who puts in her only two pennies, rather than trying to preserve from a sense of scarcity. I don’t know, but I do know that we all need to have the opportunity to be able to give, because giving is not a requirement, it’s an opportunity, and a response to what God has already done for us.

That was the story that came to mind this week as I was working on the passage from Paul’s second letter to the Corinthians. In the letter as a whole Paul is trying to rebuild relationship with this church that he established and clearly thinks so much of, but they have come under the influence of a group that Paul facetiously calls the super apostles. But before he gets to them, he returns to a topic that he had actually been addressing to them before and that is taking up an offering for the church in Jerusalem. While the Corinthians had originally begun to do that, it appears they stopped, although why is not clear, and so Paul is giving them an example of the other churches, and notice that it is plural, in Macedonia, which is north of Greece and is possible the churches in Philippi and Thessalonica, although that’s speculation again. But what is striking is what Paul says about these churches. As they were suffering some unknown affliction, that they were still filled with abundant joy and gave out of their extreme poverty an offering overflowing “in a wealth of generosity.”

Extravagant Church

Here is my sermon from Sunday. The text was Luke 16:19-31 and 1 Timothy 6:6-19:

Last year for Christmas, Kay Reiswig, who is a long time member of this congregation, got our family a clear acrylic bird feeder that hangs in the window so that we could watch birds feed, which was really great. But, in the spring, one of the birds decided that it shouldn’t really be a bird feeder, but would be a better place to have a nest. At the start she wasn’t really successful in that enterprise because the other birds didn’t really think a nest belonged there, and so they kept coming to eat and messing up everything that she was working on. But, eventually her persistence paid off and she got her nest built in the feeder, which we actually thought was going to be pretty cool to watch, especially after she laid her three eggs and began to sit on them. Unfortunately, one of the times she flew off, presumably and ironically probably to find some food, a much larger bird came to see if there was food and sit on the top of it and they were just heavy enough to dislodge the suction cups from the window causing everything to fall to the ground, and the eggs didn’t survive, which while sad was also another learning point for the children about life.

But the point of that story is not the sad loss of baby birds, but instead about the nature of nest building. Now when we talk about nests for humans, it’s about security and protection. We build a nest egg in order to provide for ourselves, to make sure we are protected for the future. In some ways it’s the story of the parable we heard from Luke this morning about Lazarus the beggar and the rich man, who is, contrary to some presentations, unnamed. And the rich man is actually possibly practicing extravagant generosity, as he is feasting sumptuously, except he’s only being generous with himself and friends, not with those who are in need. His nest egg is for self-protection. But, that mother bird building a nest as we watched it was not building it for herself; she was building it for future generations. Her nest egg was not about her and her security, but about protecting and building for generations to come. And what’s even more impressive is that the mother bird will take care of whatever eggs are in the nest, even if they aren’t hers. And that is an example of extravagant generosity that’s closer to what we’ve been talking about and what we do here as a congregation.

Extravagant Love

Here is my message from Sunday. The text was Deuteronomy 6:1-9 and John 13:33-35:

In the 12th chapter of Mark, in a story we didn’t touch on in our series on Mark, but with which most of us are familiar, a scribe comes to Jesus and asks what is the greatest commandment? There is a parallel story in Matthew, although the set-up is a little different. In answer to that, Jesus quotes from the passage from Deuteronomy that we just heard: “Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one; you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.” And then he says, quoting from Leviticus, “The second is this, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” And then concludes “There is no other commandment greater than these.” (Mark 12:28-31) Now the first of those commandments is known as the shema, coming from the Hebrew word hear, and is one of if not the most important prayer within Judaism. Following this commandment, it is the prayer that is said when rising in the morning, and it is the prayer said when going to sleep. If you see Jews with items strapped to their foreheads and arms in prayer, known as tefillin this is part of the scripture contained in those, as well as in mezuzah, which are the small scrolls at the entryway to a Jewish house. It is centered around the love of God; everything else comes out of that. Now it could be said that if we are to love God, then we are to also love our neighbor, as God commands that, and so maybe that’s not necessary, although it would be easy to forget as we forget other things that God tells us to do.

But, for us as Christians, it’s concluded not just in Jesus saying both are important, but also in the commandment that he gives to the disciples, to us, on his last night that we are to love one another, and that by the love that we show we will be known as his disciples. That is our faith is based in and flows out of love for God and love for neighbor, or love for the world. And why do we love God? Because God first loved us and God has already given to us. We see that too in the passage from Deuteronomy because of the promise that the Israelites are moving into a land flowing with milk and honey. The bounty they have received in their lives has been given to them by God, and so the only appropriate response to that is to love God and to praise God and to teach not just their children about what God has done for them, but even their children’s children. I think that’s a pretty amazing and strong injunction, and they make this teaching a key part of every moment of every day of their lives. You cannot be separated from the call to love God with all your heart, and all your soul and all your strength. There is nothing held back. It’s with everything we have, and this is how we will be known, by how we live in that love and how we give.

Baseball Has a Problem

Major League Baseball has some significant problems, and they are of their own making. They are also solvable, although they don’t seem willing to do anything. 

Last night the team from Atlanta beat the team from Houston and won the World Series and I didn’t watch even a single pitch of the whole series. I am a huge fan, and even when the Yankees aren’t in the playoffs I still watch. But not this year, because the choice between cheating and racism was untenable for me.

So let’s start with the easiest one and that is the team from Houston whose World Series victory from 2017 is forever tainted because they were found to have cheated, and they eliminated my Yankees on the way. Although the commissioner said it wasn’t a big deal because they just won “a piece of metal.” Makes you wonder what the commissioner thinks is the most important thing in the game.

There is evidence that they were cheating in later years as well, and perhaps they still are. And I say that, not just as a disgruntled Yankee fan, but because there were no repercussions for the players for their cheating. Additionally, they have never truly apologized for what they did, and as Maya Angelou said, if you show me who you are I’m going to believe you. You don’t get your integrity back simply because you say you aren’t doing it any more. And to get to the World Series this year they had to beat the team from Boston, who were also caught cheating in winning the 2018 World Series. Sounds like there is a problem doesn’t it?

Then we move to the team from Atlanta, who originally started out in Boston and were named the Braves then, when people didn’t really think about such things. Perhaps it really was intended as an honorific, although I would doubt that, but times change. Just as a certain Washington football team and baseball team from Cleveland have decided to change their name, I think it’s time for Atlanta to do the same, and maybe, possibly, perhaps they are thinking about it. It depends on the day you ask.

But, the tomahawk chop has to go. Even though the commission has said it’s not a problem, and the team has said it’s not a problem, it’s a problem. And the fact that the team has one tribe, with whom they have significant financial deals, say it’s not a problem doesn’t mean it’s not. Because many other groups and tribes say it absolutely is a problem and they object, including other players of indigenous heritage. And the harder truth is that white people don't get to tell others something is acceptable or not.

The president of the National Congress of American Indians, Fawn Sharp, said, in response to MLB saying it’s fine, the Braves’ name, logo and the chop “are meant to depict and caricature not just one tribal community, but all Native people, and that is certainly how baseball fans and Native people everywhere interpret them.”

And as Suzan Shown Harjo, a Cheyenne civil rights activist, said, it’s not as if it is even taking a native practice and accommodating it to something else. Instead, “that’s a White person’s invention… the ‘boom-boom-boom’… the ‘woo-woo-woo’… is just drunken White people coming out of bars at closing time and has nothing to do with Indians.” It’s other people trying to pretend to be another culture or group, and doing so in a demeaning way. And it doesn’t even have history to support it as it didn’t get introduced in Atlanta until 1991.

Here is some more history. Even if they were trying to honor local indigenous persons, there are exactly zero federal recognized tribes in the state of Georgia. Zilch, nada, none. Not because there were no indigenous tribes in the area, or even that they were all wiped out through genocide, although that played a role. Instead, they were all moved to other areas of the country, particularly Oklahoma. The Trail of Tears includes tribes from this area. And so what MLB has decided to do is to thumb their nose, not just at cheating, but also at the idea that this behavior might even be considered by anyone as inconsiderate.

And so this year I didn’t watch. I know other people who also didn’t watch, and the fact that they had record low ratings says that many other people did the same. And that’s on top of the fact that the average age of MLB fans is the highest of the major sports at 57.

MLB has done everything they can to avoid dealing with their issues because they feel like they are still printing money. But, short-term gains often go against long-term success, and when you begin to lose even your most dedicated fans, it’s problematic, and perhaps even a sign that it may be too late. But, as one very wage sage once said, “Baseball has to be a great sport because the owners haven’t been able to kill it yet.”

Without An Ending

Here is my message from Sunday. The text was Mark 16:1-8:

Have you ever been watching a movie when it just suddenly ends? That is there is no resolution, or perhaps you want to know a lot more information then was presented, and you’re like, wait, what? You can’t end it like that. There has to be more story there, what happened after that? I need more; give me more. The gospel of Mark is just like that. Our earliest and best manuscripts end at verse 8a with the women fleeing from the tomb in fear and not telling anyone. And so our desire to wonder if that is it and expect a little more, is nothing new, because at some point later scribed or editors added in more stories to make it match closer to what the other gospels contain. To have post resurrection appearances and to have Mary tell others of the resurrection. And so if you open up the pew Bible, for those in the sanctuary, to page 55 in the New Testament and those watching online I encourage you to open your Bible to the end of Mark in chapter 16, and you will see there that you have what is called the shorter ending starting at verse 8b, and then the longer ending starting at verse 9. You will also see they are in brackets and there is a footnote saying that these ending are not original to Mark, although they are part of the tradition and so the translators are not removing them, at least not yet. Now part of the problem is that the Greek actually ends very strangely, as it there might have originally been more. That has led to speculation that perhaps Mark was arrested or otherwise stopped from being able to finish, or perhaps the last page of the manuscript was lost, although those seem extremely unlikely. And the other theory, and the one I subscribe to, is that it ends exactly the way that Mark intended it to end. Because, in my opinion, if you pay attention to the story Mark tells, and why he is telling it, his abrupt ending makes total sense, and I’ll tell you why, although not quite yet.

Last week when we looked at chapter 13 and the little Apocalypse, I said that it is believed by most scholars that Mark was written sometime around the year 70 during the time of the Jewish revolt, and is the first of the gospels to be written. It’s also speculated that it was perhaps written in Rome, although there is not a consensus on that, where the church had also been facing persecution under the emperor Nero and his fiddling. Perhaps it was the fiddling that was the torture. And while the gospel has also traditionally been attributed to Mark, a partner of Peter, there is nothing in the gospel supporting that attribution and it does not claim to be written by Mark. I say all that first to note that the reason the gospels were even begun to be written down was because the second coming had not yet happened, as the early church it would come shortly, and therefore there was no reason to record the stories, but when it didn’t happen, they didn’t want to lose the story. And so these stories are being recorded to start around 40 years after Jesus’ death and resurrection, and so the community first hearing Mark would have known about the resurrection, and later appearances, which gave Mark, as I have argued, greater latitude in telling his story. He didn’t really need to tell us about Mary passing on the story to the disciples because people already knew that she had done that. They had heard Paul’s stories of post resurrection appearances, including to him. And so as I said in the first week, Mark is not writing history or a biography, he’s writing a gospel, which is theological, and Mark can leave out some stories because they are not crucial to his particular story.

The Little Apocalypse

Here is my message from Sunday. The text was Mark 13:1-9, 12-13, 21-26, 32, 35-37:

There are just some passages from scripture that at the end it’s a little hard to say, this is the good news of Jesus Christ, or even this is the word of God for the people of God. And the passage we heard from Mark today, and even to a degree from Daniel, is one of those passages. Pain, war, destruction, suffering, “yea, God.” Or as I overheard one of the choir members say one time, if that’s the good news, what’s the bad news. That passage we heard from Mark is known as Mark’s little apocalypse, although it’s not technically an apocalypse at all. But a little prelude and postlude for this story so that we can better understand not just what Jesus is saying, but also what Mark is doing with this story it its construction. Last week we heard Jesus’ third passion prediction which was given as he and the disciples and others were making their way to Jerusalem. Mark then has the story of the transfiguration, which we will come back to next week, then Jesus triumphal entry into Jerusalem, which we celebrate on Palm Sunday. The Jesus spends a few days in and around the Temple grounds, which is where the passage we heard picks up as he is leaving the Temple. But, Jesus is not just being a tourist there, he’s also engaging with the religious leaders on various questions, and then he makes a judgment against the Temple its leaders.

When we looked at the Parable of the Sower, I said that New Testament scholar Mary Ann Tolbert said that there were two parables which described not Jesus’ ministry and mission, but also the entirety of Mark’s gospel. One of them, and the most important was the parable of the sower, and the second is that of the Parable of the Wicked Tenants. In that Parable, which comes at the beginning of chapter 12, we are told that a man plants a vineyard, and builds a watchtower, and prepares everything then leases it out to tenants. Then, when the time comes for the landowner to collect what’s do to him he sends servants, but they are rejected and beaten, and insulted and some are killed, and so finally he decides to send his beloved son, his only son, and they too kill him so they can claim the land. So what does the landowner do? He comes and destroys the tenants and gives the vineyard to others. And so this parable we should be hearing the owner as God, the tenants as the religious leaders, and a watchtower is a common metaphor used for the Temple, and of course the son is Jesus. And so really this could be seen as a potential fourth passion prediction, although the purpose is to make judgment against the leaders of the Temple.

Give Us Power

Here is my message from Sunday. The text was Mark 10:35-45:

Exactly two weeks before he would be assassinated, martyred for his work for racial and economic justice, and calls for peace, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., educated at a United Methodist school, preached his last sermon. Entitled “The Drum Major Instinct” it was based on the passage that we just heard from Mark. And what King said was that there is a natural tendency in most people, and maybe all people, to want to be out front. And in being the one out front it also give us the glory, people applaud us directly, even if it’s meant for the whole band, but we are separated from them as well, leading the way. And yet that’s the opposite of what Jesus has called us to in the life of discipleship, and we see that in the audacious request, or perhaps we might even say brazen request, that James and John make to Jesus. And yet we shouldn’t be all that surprised, because as we have encountered several times already as we have made our way through Mark, the disciples continue to not get or understand what Jesus is telling them and teaching them about discipleship.

As I’ve said before, Mark likes to group stories and themes together, to sort of serve as a framework of emphasis. And so two weeks we heard Jesus’ first passion prediction, which was then immediately followed by a teaching by Jesus about discipleship. And why was that teaching necessary? Because Peter rebukes Jesus for the passion prediction. And so Jesus tells them ‘If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it.” That’s chapter 8, and as a reminder that happens after Jesus heals a blind man. Then in chapter 9, along with the story of the transfiguration, which we will come back to in two weeks, Jesus gives his second passion prediction, and this time we are told specifically that the disciples don’t understand what he is saying and they are afraid to ask him to explain it. And then to show us how much they don’t understand, they begin arguing amongst themselves about who is the greatest, and in overhearing this Jesus tells them “Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all.” Now the truth is that there is a hierarchy within the disciples, that there are three who seem to be in positions of prominence, or at least preference, and those three are Peter, James and John, although it’s not clear what part they play in the argument about greatness or if there is jealousy amongst the other disciples for their position. But, we have two passion predictions, two examples of the disciples not getting it, and then correction and teaching from Jesus about discipleship. So surely they must be starting to understand right?

The Confession

Here is my sermon from Sunday. The text was Mark 8:27-38:

For those who study the literary structure of scripture, some have argued that the gospel of Mark is circular. Not that he is making a circular argument but that the stories that happen at the beginning of Mark are paralleled at the end, so that there are rings to the story. If you accept that argument then the center of the gospel can also be found, the story around which everything else centers. But, even if you don’t accept that theory, and I’m not arguing either for it or against it, in Mark there is a clear center of the story. A clear place in which everything leads up to it, and then everything leads away from it, and that is the story we heard this morning of Peter’s proclamation of faith and the first passion prediction that Jesus makes. It also happens to be conveniently enough, basically right in the center of the gospel as well. There are 16 chapters in Mark and the story is found in chapter 8. It also represents a break in time. There are three years of Jesus’ ministry encapsulated up to this point, and he begins making his way to Jerusalem with 3 passion predictions in the next two chapters, and then the remaining five chapters tell the last week of Jesus’ life. That delineation is why Mark has sometimes been referred to as a passion narrative with an extended introduction. And it is this passage that begins that passion narrative especially with Jesus’ passion prediction. I’ve already talked a little about how Mark structures the story around grouping stories or common themes. And this chunk of text is also bracketed by two healing stories, that also happen to be the healing of blind men, and we’ll come back to why that is important.

But Jesus and the disciples have left Galilee and are traveling to the cities, or the area of Caesarea Philippi. Now this is a town named for two Roman rules, first for Caesar Augustus, and then for Herod Phillip, Herod the Great’s son who is the ruler, the tetrarch, of the area. And so there is a clear roman presence and political importance to this town. Additionally, depending on when Mark was written, and we’ll address that in a few weeks, Vespasian, before he becomes Emperor, rested his troops in the city before going forth to crush the Jewish resistance in Galilee during the Jewish Revolt, and his son Titus, before he too becomes emperor, celebrated his victory over Jerusalem in the city by executing captives and holding a victory games. So there is a lot of significance to where this is taking place for those who first heard Mark’s story. But, Jesus is not in the city, he is on the way there. Instead he is in that in-between that is so important in Mark; he is in the wilderness. And he asks the disciples “who do people say that I am?”

Seed and Soil

Here is my message from Sunday. The text was Mark 4:1-20:

In the synoptic gospels, which are Matthew, Mark and Luke, called that because they have the same synopses of Jesus’ life, there are around 30 parables. There are none found in John. And I say there are around 30, because there is great debate around what a parable is and isn’t. We tend to have a much narrower view of parables now than how they were understood in the first century, when they included not just the stories we are sort of familiar in thinking of being parables, but also included narratives, proverbs and other sayings or teachings that have a deeper religious significance then just a straightforward meaning. But, of the 30 or so parables, five to eight are found in Matthew, Mark and Luke, and while we might argue about significance, the parable we heard this morning, which has come to be known as the parable of the sower, might be the most important of those that we have multiple times. This is especially true for the gospel of Mark and for its understanding and overall story telling. 

Indeed, in her book, Sowing the Gospel, which can give you some indication of where this is going, New Testament scholar Mary Ann Tolbert says that the parable of the sower in particular, and matched with the parable of the wicked tenants found in chapter 12 of Mark, as well as also in Matthew and Luke, “present in concise, summary form the Gospel’s view of Jesus: He is the sower of the word and the heir of the vineyard. The first emphasizes his task and the second his identity; together they make up the gospel’s basic narrative.” (122) That is to say that these two parables orient us to not only what the gospel is about, and what Jesus’ message is about, but about how to identify the characters in the story and what is to be expected if we truly understand and follow Jesus’ message, although she argues that the Parable of the Sower is the more important of the two.

Don't Tell Anyone

Here is my message from Sunday. The text was Mark 1:40-2:12:

In 1901 William Wrede, who was a German New Testament scholar, published a book which came to be known in English as The Messianic Secret. Although there was initial rejection of his theory, it later became prominent in Markan scholarship. What Wrede was trying to wrestle with in Mark was two problems: The first is that Jesus never claims that he is the messiah and the second is that Jesus has this strange habit in Mark of telling people not to tell others who he is, or what he is doing. Jesus does this with the disciples, with those he heals and others and with demons he encounters. And so what Wrede argued was that Mark created this story of Jesus hiding his identity by asking people to keep quiet about it in order to overcome the tension in the early church between their belief that Jesus was the messiah against Jesus never claiming he was the Messiah. And so he postulated the idea of the Messianic secret that Jesus knew he was the Messiah but didn’t say so in order to be able to do his work, and that the disciples knew it all along but didn’t say it until after the resurrection because Jesus told them not to. Now I think Wrede is correct about one thing, and that is that Mark probably made up Jesus telling everyone not to say anything, and before you freak out about that I’ll explain why in a moment, but he is wrong about the reason, and there is no messianic secret. And although Wrede’s theory has largely fallen out of favor, if you read commentaries you will still find people tying themselves into knots to try and explain why Jesus is trying to keep everything secret, and in my opinion not only don’t their ideas make any sense, they are missing the most obvious thing, and that’s about what Mark is trying to teach us about discipleship and the cost of discipleship and what proper discipleship looks like.

And so last week as we began this series on Mark, and we looked at the beginning verses I commented on the fact that we get an early example of the cost of discipleship demonstrated for us in John the Baptist. That Jesus’ ministry begins when John is arrested and that he will then later be executed by the state as well, just as Jesus does. And so we already can see what discipleship means before we even get into the story of Jesus. And then when Jesus does begin his ministry he too has a call to repentance, just as John did, although he does not yet talk about forgiveness, that comes in the passage we heard today, but he also says that the Kingdom of God has come near. And I said that Jesus will then begin to show what that Kingdom looks like, or what God’s will is for the world, and that begins with healing. Because the first healing story in today’s passage of the healing of the leper, which ends the first chapter, is actually the third healing story to take place in Mark. The first healing takes place in a synagogue where Jesus heals a man who we are told has an unclean spirit, that is he is possessed, but the demon knows who Jesus is, calling him “the Holy One of God.” and Jesus silences him and casts it out. They then make their way to the home of Simon Peter, where Jesus heals Peter’s mother-in-law, before he goes to a deserted place, remembering the importance of wilderness, which will come back in a moment, before then moving into the region of Galilee to preach and cast out demons, which is where he encounters the man with leprosy.

The Gospel

Here is my message from Sunday. The text was Mark 1:1-14:

We get the English word gospel from the old English word gōdspel. Now spel means to report of to tell news, and so with the prefix it looks like it could mean to tell news about God. Except that the prefix actually isn’t god, but instead means good. And so gōdspel, just like gospel, means the good news, or proclaiming good news. And that is the message that starts the gospel of Mark, “the beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.” Now we could probably spend our whole time just unpacking that single line, but we’re not going to, except to say that the Greek word for good news there, is the word that the old English gōdspel was trying to capture and that is euangelion. In looking at that word, I’m sure you can see some antecedents of some English words, like evangelist and also angel, which is appropriate as those who bring good news. But it had broader meaning than that as well. It was the news that was brought, it was the person who brought the news and it was also the word used for a reward given to the person bringing the news. So we still have the expression don’t kill the messenger, which would sometimes happen, but the opposite of that was that a reward would be given to someone who brought good news. Same word. And so we have reference to this in several famous Greek works, including Homer and Plutarch and Cicero. And yet, it appears that Mark is doing something very different here with this word. Mark is saying is that this good news is not just about the message, but it’s about the messenger himself. That Jesus is not just the bringer of the good news, but the good news himself and that appears to be unique.

Now Paul, who is responsible for the earliest Christian writings that we have, had also used the term euangelion as good news, but he was primarily referencing to the death and resurrection of Jesus. And although Mark has been said to be a passion narrative with a long introduction, he appears to be the first to be making not just the connection that he is, but also possibly creating a new genre of literature, the gospel. There is lots of argument of whether that is what Mark is doing here, as he doesn’t actually call this work a gospel, and there is speculation of whether he was building off of other works already in existence that we no longer have access to. But, this is a different type of work than what we know existed at the time, such as the works about great men, thinking things like Plutarch’s Lives. Luke’s gospel is very similar to that type of work, but Mark is not. He is doing something different, and again that’s encapsulated in this opening line “the beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.” 

Carry Out Kindness

Here is my message from Sunday. The texts were James 1:17-27 and Luke 6:27-38:

After last week’s message on practicing praise, I had a lot of people coming up to me to give me thanks, and so then I had to decide whether it was just everyone working on practicing praise, especially the injunction not to let people assume you are appreciated, but to tell them, or if there were lots of people who decided to practice the kindness challenge on me. But, since one of the things we are working on is assuming the best of intentions for others, I am going to go with the first answer. Today we conclude in our series on the Kindness Challenge, which is based off a book by the same name by Shaunti Feldhahn, and so a quick recap of the three rules of the kindness challenge. The first rule is to nix the negativity, that is we are not to say anything negative to the person we are doing the kindness challenge for, not to say anything negative about them to someone else. The second rule is practice praise, that is as we start to stop focusing on the negative we instead look for positives and to give one piece of praise or affirmation about someone else every day, and tell someone else what you praised them for. If you missed either of those messages, I would encourage you to go back and listen to them, which then leads us into the final rule, which we cover today, and that is to carry out kindness, or to do a small act of kindness or generosity for the person you are doing the kindness challenge for every day, and to do all three of these steps for 30 days, although you don’t have to stop there.

Additionally, while the kindness challenge asks you to do each of these things every day for 30 days, and really you can practice these for anyone and at any time. And the truth is if we want the world to be a kinder place, then it has to start with us. If we want people to be kinder, then we need to be kinder. And what’s more we shouldn’t be doing any of these actions with the expectation that we will get anything in return. We do them simply because they are the right things to be doing, the way that we should be living. And we of course hear that quite a bit in scripture. As we heard in James today, he says that we are to be doers of the world, not just hearers, which is a preview of him saying that faith without works is dead.

Practice Praise

Here is my message from Sunday. The text was 1 Thessalonians 5:12-23 and Luke 17:11-19:

Two weeks ago when we began talking about the kindness challenge, I said that I had originally planned on doing this series later, but felt called that we needed to be doing it now. That decision has been reinforced not just by those of you who have commented on the need to have this, and the arguments you all are having about kindness, which maybe sort of kind of defeating the point. But it was also reinforced by an email we got from the principal of the middle school this past week telling parents that one of their key emphasis to students was to be kind to one another, and then a meeting with the athletic director for the school district who said that she has a hard time retaining coaches because of the grief that they receive from some parents. And what she then basically said, although she didn’t know the language that we are using was to nix the negative, stop criticizing everything they do, give them a break, and instead start practicing praise and supporting them, and so that covers the first of the two rules of what we are being challenged to do in practicing the Kindness Challenge.

And so as a quick reminder this comes from a book of the same name written by Shaunti Feldhahn, and while the ultimate goal is to practice kindness in all areas of our lives, the challenge is to pick one relationship which you would like to improve, it could one that is only hanging on by a thread, or maybe one that’s going okay, but could be better, and then for 30 days to do three things. The first is not to say anything negative to them or about them to anyone else, and a reminder because someone asked me this week, that also includes all the non-verbal ways we express negativity or our displeasure. And there is a supplement, or another option for that rule that is really for men who are doing the challenge for their spouse, and you can hear about that or the other ways to avoid negativity by listening to last week’s message, which is available on our website and our Facebook and YouTube pages. The second rule, which is what we are talking about today, is to practice praise which is to find one positive thing that you can sincerely praise or affirm about the person you are doing the challenge for and to tell them and tell one other person, and do that every day for 30 days. And then the third rule, which we’ll conclude with next week is to do a small act of kindness or generosity every day for your person. And so while removing the negative comments is important, practicing praise, having to look for and talk about positive things in order to give praise is the catalyst to kindness because it then causes you to have to change what it is you are focusing on and paying attention to.

Nix the Negative

Here is my message from Sunday. The text was Matthew 5:21-24 and James 3:1-12:

When Charles Darwin was originally formulating his idea of evolution, he said that one of the things that almost undid it for him was the idea of kindness and altruism, let alone sacrifice. After all, if it’s about the survival of the fittest and making sure that your genes survive for future generations, taking care of your own makes sense, but why would you ever want to help others, especially strangers. But later on, according to Dr. Dacher Keltner, a professor at UC Berkeley, he says that Darwin actually came to believe that our need to be social and caring may actually be stronger than our desire for self-preservation, and it’s ingrained not socially learned. Indeed, Dr. Keltner says, “evolution [has] crafted a species—us—with remarkable tendencies toward kindness, play, generosity, reverence and self-sacrifice, which are vital to the classic tasks of evolution—survival, gene replication and smooth functioning groups.” That is, kindness is ingrained in us, and we can see this even from the earliest age.

In a study done with six-month-olds, they were shown a round piece of wood that had eyes glued onto it and it was struggling to climb up a felt mountain. After seeing the circle struggling, a triangle piece of wood, also with eyes glued on it, came along and tried to help push the circle to the top. But then along comes a square piece of wood, with eyes, that tries to push the triangle and the circle down so they can’t make it to the top. What experimenters wanted to know was how the infants would respond, and while they couldn’t verbalize how they felt about the pieces of wood, they could express it by which blocks they played with, and which do you think they refused to play with? The square. The block that wasn’t kind. They even introduced a neutral observer block who did nothing to hinder or help, and the children still preferred the triangle to the others. So, even before we know what’s happening, we have a natural preference for those who help and are kind over those who are unkind. And what scans of the brain have also found is that when we participate in acts of kindness that the pleasure centers of our brain are activated, and so kindness in and of itself can be its own reward. And so with that we continue in our series on the Kindness Challenge, which is based upon a book of the same name by Shaunti Feldhahn.

Be Kind to One Another

Here is my message from Sunday. The scripture passage was Ephesians 4:25-5:2:

If it seems like flying the friendly skies is a little less friendly these days, you’d be right. The FAA began keeping records of referrals made to them of unruly passengers on planes in 1995.  A few weeks ago they released statistics on those unruly passengers on planes so far in 2021. In less than six months this year, there have been more reports than in any full year since they began keeping those records. This has included a Southwest flight attendant being punched in the face, losing two teeth. A Delta flight being diverted to Albuquerque after a passenger threatened to bring the plane down and tried to get into the cockpit. There have been multiple incidents of passengers fighting with each other. Southwest and American have delayed bringing back alcohol sales, and United only sells beer and wine, and then only on long flights, to try and eliminate alcohol exacerbating the already high tensions. Long time flight attendants have said it’s worse than they can ever remember it. And then we could talk about increasing altercations in grocery and big box stores, which are also on the rise. It seems like we’ve just forgotten how to get along with others.

And so with all of that in mind, today we begin a new worship series entitled The Kindness Challenge, which is based upon a book of the same name by Shaunti Feldhahn. I initially read the book a number of years ago, and even did a series on it at my last church, but with our current climate and situation I decided to dust it off and do it over again. I was going to do it later in the year, but decided to move it up now because I think it’s necessary for us as Christians to be showing a different way of living. As was said in the introduction to the passage from Ephesians today, when we put on the clothes of Christ, something we’ve heard a lot of in the past few months, then we are to put away the ways of the world, and to live like Christ, to imitate Christ, and one of the ways we do that Paul says is by practicing kindness.

That's a Mistake. It's a Perfect Ten.

Here is my message from Sunday. The text was Matthew 5:43-48:

Just a week short of a year ago, as we made our way through Genesis, our passage was God’s call to Abraham to sacrifice his only son Isaac, whom he loved. And I said that when we dealt with that story that we had to deal with the reality that we sacrifice our children for many, many lesser reasons. And I quoted Russell Baker writing in the New York Times who said, “Parents who make their children's lives hell in order to make the parents proud of themselves are a commonplace of American life.” Especially when it comes to sports and then I also reminded us that we also see our children sacrificed as victims of sexual and physical violence, neglect and homelessness, child labor and poverty. And I don’t think we can actually talk about the Olympics without naming those realities, especially as we look at the film Nadia, which came out in 1984 as a made for TV movie about Nadia Comaneci. While some of you may have seen it at the time, I doubt that it touched many of you with its cinematic brilliance. There is actually a Facebook page for fans of the movie and it has a whole 128 people who like it, so not at the top of the Olympic movie pyramid.

But, I choose it for several reasons. The first is that I wanted a film that featured a female athlete, and there just aren’t a lot of them out there. The second was that I thought Nadia’s achievement of perfection in the 1976 Olympics could provide us a good perspective to talk about perfecting our faith, as hear in the gospel passage we have for today. And third, it could also provide us some perspective on Olympic achievements and their aftermath, which are not always pretty, nor is the path to get there. Although today’s message is going to be very different than what I had thought it would be because of the events of this week in women’s gymnastics especially as they surround Simone Biles. If Biles is not the greatest female gymnast of all time, she and Nadia Comaneci are certainly in the conversation. And it turns out that they actually have a lot in common.

Feel the Rhythm! Feel the Rhyme! Get On Up, It's Bobsled Time!

Here is my message from Sunday. The text was 1 Samuel 17:1a, 4-11, 32-49:

In preparation for the Olympic Games in Atlanta in 1996, Nike put up a billboard that said “You don’t win the silver, you lose the gold.” According to Nike, it was supposed to be inspiring, but for US wrestler Townsend Saunders, an Arizona State alum, when he walked out of the arena wearing a silver medal, he said those words stung. “It’s not terrible for everyone else to read” he said, “It’s just terrible for every silver medalist.” He went home depressed thinking he should have given more effort and won gold. “It was an honor to represent my country,” he said, “but to have come so close.” Eventual he came to terms with his loss and realized that not very many people have a silver medal either.[i] And really, the billboard seemed to be in opposition to many of the things the Olympics represent.  Baron de Coubertin, the founder of the modern Olympic Games, said “The important thing in the Olympic Games in not winning but taking part. The essential thing in life is not conquering but fighting well.” And that, I think, is one of the things that make the Olympics great. Because while there are certainly those who win, who mark themselves as great, that we celebrate, people like Jesse Owens or Simone Biles or Michael Phelps, we are often just as amazed by those who give everything even know that they have little chance of winning. The Olympics are just as much, or maybe even more about those athletes. And so perhaps with that idea it’s appropriate that today’s film is Cool Runnings about the Jamaican Bobsled team who first participated in the 1988 Olympics in Calgary.

In trying to find films for this series, I was looking for a film about someone who was expected to win and didn’t, but there aren’t a lot of them out there. And so the next best option was films that celebrate the mere act of competing and there are some good films that do that, and this is one of the best. But, we do have to be honest and say that it says that this is based on a true story, and that is true. There was a bobsled team from Jamaica, and there are a couple of other things that are true from the story, but most of the rest of it is made up for entertainment purposes, and so that does mark this story as different from other Olympic films. It’s still very entertaining, but don’t take this as what actually happened, and in it also has a bigger connecting to the story of David and Goliath.

You Can Run. You Can Jump. But, Can You Win?

Here is my message from Sunday. The text was 1 Corinthians 9:24-27:

Last week as we began our worship series on the gospel message to be found in movies about the Olympics we looked at the movie Miracle, about the 1980 US hockey team who won gold. To help them prepare for that, their coach told them they were going to work harder than they had ever worked before, and wanted to know that they were actually going to be dedicated enough to actually get it done? That is often the difference between success and failure not just in sports, but in most aspects of life. How much are you willing to put into it? Are you willing to put in everything you have, and even more, or do you want to just do enough to get by? And more importantly in our faith lives, what are we willing to do? Paul really asks the Corinthian community, are you putting everything you have in to win the race of faith, or is your desire and wants somewhere else?

And so today we look at the movie Race, which is about Jesse Owens who is arguably one of, if not the greatest Olympic athlete of all time, having won 4 gold medals at the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin, and I hope that didn’t ruin the surprise for anyone. There is so much we could talk about this film including that the movie’s title has sort of a double meaning to it, not only being about the races that Owens won as a track star, but also about the realities of being a black man in America and in Hitler’s Olympic games. But today we are going to focus on the fact no one gets to the Olympics by just talent alone. Talent will get you only so far on its own, but it takes more than just talent to be your best and especially the best in the world. And so Owens, whose family moved to Ohio from Alabama when he was a boy, goes to Ohio State University to run on their track team, at a time in which their football team was still another 7 years away from being integrated. And when he gets there, his coach, Larry Snyder, wonders what he has. Take a look…

The Name on the Front of the Jersey is More Important Than the Name on the Back

Here is my sermon from Sunday. The text was Galatians 3:23-29:

Since the summer Olympics are set to start in less than two weeks, a year late and many billions of dollars over budget, and unlike any Olympics we’ve ever seen before. I thought now would be a great time to begin a new worship series which will go for the next four weeks looking at the gospel message, or the Christian message, we can find in films about the Olympics. And please notice that this is not the gospel according to the Olympics, as we have only four gospels we use, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, but the gospel in Olympic films. That is seeing Christian stories or themes, or finding them, in areas in which we might not ordinarily think to look. We start with one of the best, and more recent Olympic films, and that is the film Miracle, about the 1980 US Olympic hockey team who, against all odds and expectations, and 40-year-old spoiler alert, defeated the Soviet hockey team, probably one of the greatest hockey teams ever to play, having won gold at the last four Olympics. And while the film certainly tells the story of that game, and does it extraordinarily well in my opinion, it’s the story of how they got to that point that makes the difference and leads us to what we are going to explore today.

Herb Brooks, played by Kurt Russell, was the coach of the University of Minnesota hockey team and was hired in 1979 to coach the Olympic team after several others had turned it down because they didn’t think they could compete, certainly with the soviets, but Brooks had a different idea, and a different way of constructing his team. He wasn’t necessarily going to take the best players, as he said “All-star teams fail because they rely solely on the individual's talent. The Soviets win because they take that talent and use it inside a system that's designed for the betterment of the team.” The only way they could beat the soviets, he said, was to play the best team hockey they could, not just having the best players they could get. And so rather than having tryouts as normal, Brooks instead handpicked all the players for the team. But that didn’t mean it was easy going because these were guys that had played against each other at the highest levels of college hockey for national championships, and so there was some bad blood existing. Take a look…

In-Person and Digital Worship

Several months ago we cut the cord on our cable (or actually our satellite dish). We had been talking about it and looking at all the different options and when the price was going up, and the company offered to upgrade me to a more expensive package, but not cut the price, we decided to bite the bullet and do it, and we haven’t really looked back. And we are not alone.

There were an estimated 25 million people who had stopped using cable or satellite by 2017. This year that number is supposed to reach 50 million, with another 5 million added next year, and still growing beyond that. Netflix now has more subscribers in the US than cable and satellite combined. Additionally cable viewership of those between 18-49 is down more than 27% in the past two years, even with people being locked up at home. This is the reality of the world in which we live, and it will only continue.

We live in an on-demand world. Other than for sports, or very special shows, people don’t want to have to wait until a specific time to watch a show, and then not be able to catch it again until much later. They want to be able to see it when they want to watch not when someone else says they can watch it. And then there is the whole issue of binging a whole series or season at once. Some entertainment companies have recognized this reality and embraced it, others are working towards it, and others who resist will simply disappear.  

This is not true just for TV, but for many other things that used to demand everyone to be in one place at the same time. While I do still “attend” workshops and trainings that are at a particular time and day, most of the things I attend or see offered that I might be interested in are on demand. I do the work when it’s convenient for me and interact with others who are doing the same thing at the same time. There may be time limitations, that is the class is only happening during a period of dates, but it still works on my schedule. Just look at what universities are doing in online classes and you’ll see how true this is becoming.

Now until the past year most churches have been anything but doing that. We offered worship at a particular time and if you couldn’t make that, then you were out of luck. And other than perhaps watching or listening to the sermon later, which even then was a rarity in most churches, there was no way to catch up. That is not conducive to a culture that wants things differently, and wants them when they want them. McDonalds now offers breakfast all day for a reason.

Now all this does not mean you can’t still offer things at a particular time, but unless you are really special, again think sports, people want other ways to interact when they want. Our streaming allows us to do this because you can now access our worship service any time after it happens, as well as to just watch the message if you want. I haven’t heard of anyone bingeing an entire worship series at one time yet, but I do know many people who are watching the worship service at a time that works better for them for many reasons.

Now one of the things that people get stuck in is either/or thinking, rather than both/and. It’s not that we are going to preference those in the sanctuary over online, or vice versa. Both are constituents of the congregation. As Phillip Ortega keeps saying, which I encourage, “we need to meet people where they are.”

You cannot make people do what you want them to do, but that they don’t want to do. If you are a parent or own cats you know is true. It’s about thinking of ways of being church in new ways in order to reach new people. We have people worshipping with us online on a regular basis, and sometimes just once, who don’t even live in New Mexico, let alone Los Alamos. Our possibility of growth online also becomes exponential over what we can do here.

In-person worship and gatherings are not going away, but neither is the digital, and both can inform and build on each other, as well as increase engagement, and as one person I recently read said, if we don’t embrace the digital, “your church will probably continue to function like a mall in the age of Amazon.” Malls are dying and to quote a book title, I refuse to lead a dying church.

But that’s just a start, and I’ll expand more in the next few weeks. So I want to know from you, where do you see opportunities for us in the digital world that we are not currently using, what are your concerns, and how do you think you might be able to assist?